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It's Alive

In this sci-fi film a loony farmer finds a prehistoric monster hiding in a cavern on his land. To feed his newest critter, the farmer kidnaps three people. The three desperately try to escape and finally, one of them succeeds.

The movie was ok, and the acting was good, but the monster was a joke, a guy in a rubber outfit, it should make all monster everywhere hang their heads in shame. But the mad caretaker was the best, and it had a good plot. So give it a look, and stay on the highway lol!

Reviewer:vonnoosh -
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January 28, 2013 Subject:
The end of Buchanan's contract with AIP

As the title of the review suggests, this is the last project he was contracted to make with AIP and unlike the others, this film was not remake of a film released in theaters. This movie is based on a script which was in the AIP vaults. The original film (which was supposed to star Peter Lorre) was never produced.

Tommy Kirk, Bill Thurman, and Annabelle Weenick all return to work with Buchanan. Kirk from "Mar's Needs Women" and the other two in most of his other films from this period.

The film actually moves at a decent pace up until the overlong flashback which tells Bella's story.

Again, you see the limitations of no budget ( I still wonder if he sold the fact that he promised results with so little investment when he got the AIP deal) and probably not much (too little IMO) time in preproduction, preplanning of the project.

Another 3 stars for these Buchanan films for me because again, they are a product of the time.

This is actually based on an unused script that was going to star PETER LORRE as the madman! Would have paid to see that, but I'm glad Bucky's version is free! 3 stars for the LONGEST flashback in movie history that didn't involve the whole film.

Whooo,
Bad on many levels, but I must admit, I was so glad to see Norman die. I just had hoped it would have been more horrible. Good Guy New Yorkers meet Evil Southerners. They are going to L.A. The End?
I am not going to disect this film. It is too easy. I did find it amusing, so...5 stars.

There are two ways to view this film. While on the surface it's a cheapo monster flick peopled with lost innocents lost in the clutches of a crazy backwoods hick, there's a lot more going on beneath the surface of Larry Buchanan's It's Alive. Produced from a discarded AIP screenplay by Richard Matheson, It's Alive! becomes a metaphor for the "old age" giving way to the "new age" and the death of the old. Yes, even b-movies can be thought-provoking at times, so based largely on the story-within-the-story, I'd give it 5 stars based on the actors, storyline and direction alone...but the ineffective (in this film) monster costume subtracts one star.

The last of Larry B's Azalea Pictures 8-movie deal with AIP, it looks like he was growing weary of cranking out $25,000 films by the time this was shot. It's Alive! is a very strange, but oddly fun film, definitely Larry B's darkest effort.

Yeah, I'm talking about Kirk's career. How does a kid go from working for Walt Disney to working for Larry Buchanan? And such a fast drop, too. I hope the kid had a parachute. With that said, I will give this flick some credit. After all, Larry buchanan was known for making z-grade remakes of b-movies, and at least this was no remake. But the monster was used in an earlier movie of Larry's.